This is a CU Colorado Springs student blog for urban economics the economics of social issues.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Monetary Policy: Current Financial Problems

I'm suprised the "bailout plan" didn't go through. It seems like we were headed towards this plan, at least that's what we heard from house leaders. I guess we need not be so easily misled by what we hear in politics.

All the financial problems we have now are not a suprise to people who understand economics. Many people saw them coming for a long time. I just read a speech by Ron Paul that he gave back in July. The title of the speech is "Some Big Events Are About To Occur". What we see happening in our current economy, I believe, are very much related to these events Dr. Paul talks about. You can read the article for yourself at this website.http://www.infowars.net/articles/july2008/170708Paul.htm

Here is the crucial excerpt from the speech that ties government action to the current financial problems. He shows the progression of more and more government regulation with respect to monetary supply. This has interventionalism written all over it. The government intervenes to "fix" one problem and keeps intervening to try to correct the problem they created.

"There were several stages. From the inception of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to 1933, the Central Bank established itself as the official dollar manager. By 1933, Americans could no longer own gold, thus removing restraint on the Federal Reserve to inflate for war and welfare.By 1945, further restraints were removed by creating the Bretton-Woods Monetary System making the dollar the reserve currency of the world. This system lasted up until 1971. During the period between 1945 and 1971, some restraints on the Fed remained in place. Foreigners, but not Americans, could convert dollars to gold at $35 an ounce. Due to the excessive dollars being created, that system came to an end in 1971.It's the post Bretton-Woods system that was responsible for globalizing inflation and markets and for generating a gigantic worldwide dollar bubble. That bubble is now bursting, and we're seeing what it's like to suffer the consequences of the many previous economic errors. "

Our government system has contributed to world-wide financial problems. So when people start going into the blame game about the greedy corporations, capitalists, CEOs, banks, etc., don't forget about the government that created the incentives for people to act the way that they did to all these problems. The incentives for the lenders were to lend sub prime loans. The incentives for the corporations were set up for corruption.

The bottom line is that the Fed has made the value of the dollar unstable which leads to all of these speculative bubbles. This is the reason we are seeing different markets fail now. We need to demand Economic Freedom which is our right to liberty! Economic Freedom means free markets! The Fed has regulated the monetary supply causing a build up of negative effects that we are now experiencing. The Fed needs to be viewed as a public enemy.